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The Lockdown, Brawl, and Regionals - Zoe Steinberg

December 22, 2013 -
Zoe Steinberg

So as I mentioned a while ago, after I went to the Midnight Burn, I had two more comps in November, with nothing after that until regionals. Both comps were very local, with one being at The Gravity Vault, which is 10 minutes from my house, and the next one at New Jersey Rock Gym, which is only about a 40 minute drive. A few weeks later, I drove down to Valley Township in PA for regionals.

On the morning of the Vault comp, I drove over expecting the comp to be packed, and I was right. However, by the time there was an hour and a half to go though, I had done an easy v8 and 3 v7s all first or second try. I was thinking of calling it with that, but then my friend Sol gave me some beta on 2 other v8s, and I sent them both quickly. After that I turned my card in, and wound up in first place. The problems were all fun, and I actually got a good deal of climbing in despite the lines.

The following weekend, I headed over to NJRG for their Gravity Brawl comp. I felt good climbing, and ended the redpoint round with 4 v9s and some v8s on my card. After the redpoint round, they announced the finalists. It turned out that I tied for first with none other than Ashima, and they had to count down to our seventh problem (instead of top 5) to create a running order. I was psyched; tying with her is something that I am definitely proud of. After finals started at like 9 pm, I was on the wall within an hour. The first climb wasn’t bad, but was a bit of a highball, so I didn’t really want to fall, and ended up flashing. On to the second climb, which was just my style on overhanging pinches and crimps. I managed to flash this one too. The third problem was probably my favorite climb of the comp. Fun, dynamic moves to a couple of big throws and even a double dyno. I was lucky enough to have a perfect round and flash this climb too. Unsurprisingly, Ashima flashed everything easily, so we were tied. Since the tie went back to qualifiers, they did a quick superfinal at like 11 at night. It was a pretty cool problem with some hanging bowling pins there as campus moves, and I got about two-thirds of the way up. Ashima flashed again, so she took first, and I ended up very happily in second.

Then, on the first weekend of December, I drove down to Pennsylvania to compete at ABS regionals. The format this year was different from past years, with a single onsight round of six problems, four minutes on, four minutes off. The nice thing was that my category had only seven competitors, and since USA Climbing takes seven kids per category to divisionals, I didn’t have to worry about whether or not I would qualify for divisionals. This meant that I could relax a bit and focus solely on my climbing. When I went out I flashed problems 1-5 pretty easily, and then got to the final problem. It started off steep with some good pinches, and the angle gradually decreased and turned into crimpier lock offs. I fell at a big lock off from a crimp to an undercling, which was enough to place me in first!

I felt like I was climbing well at regionals, and that it gave me a good idea of what I need to work on. I am planning on trying to get to the Dark Horse competition in Boston next weekend, and hopefully some more as the winter goes on. For now though, huge thanks to Five Ten for being so generous with their support.